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EDITOR OF REDSTATE

Arlen Specter Quietly Opens Fire on Eric Holder

Senator Arlen Specter has quietly launched the opening salvo against Eric Holder’s nomination for Attorney General. Though Specter has tried to be discreet, Senate sources have handed me a copy of Specter’s latest letter to Holder that went out yesterday.

The letter shows that “committee staff reviewed [Holder's] questionnaire responses and noted a number of apparent omissions.” Specter is “respectfully ask[ing]” Holder to either supplement his submission or provide explanations for “why [he] believe[s] [his] submission is fully responsive.”

Specter, being Specter, lists eight major defects in Holder’s response. He even gets into the Blagojevich scandal. Specter points out that Holder failed to list op-eds Holder had written in favor of affirmation action and gun ownership restrictions.

He needles Holder for failing to mention a speech he’d given to the left-wing American Constitution Society in which Holder called for a “liberal renaissance.”

The list of 8 omissions is, in themselves, pretty damning. And they don’t even get into Elian Gonzales.

Eric Holder’s nomination is not just about the Rich pardon, which is troubling on its own. There is a whole thread here weaving in and out of his work and bio — a pattern of setting aside judgment and legal analysis in favor of political expediency and, in short, being a partisan yes-man — the very thing the left accused Alberto Gonzales of being.

If the GOP wants a scalp, Holder’s is the one to get. And Specter seems intent on doing so. You can read his letter here.